When Darcy Bingham was growing up in Wisconsin., her family stressed the importance of giving back.

“My parents may not have had a lot of money that they could share, but it was certainly about sharing your time and your talents and volunteering. We kind of had a family ethos, a Midwestern ethos, that you are only allowed to complain about something so much before you were expected to go help fix it.”

Bingham came to San Diego in 1987 to pursue a graduate degree in sports management at San Diego State University. It was there that she met her future husband, Robert, who was then president of a school cycling club while she was a student working with non-varsity sports programs. The two married in 1991.

Bingham went on to work at the University of California San Diego, serving as its director of operations and associate director of recreation.

She and her husband’s fortunes changed after he sold his Internet-based company in 1998. Since then, they have dedicated much of their time to community involvement, with Bingham largely focused on college scholarship programs.

For the past five years, she has served as a trustee for the UC San Diego Foundation, which manages the university’s gift assets, and is active with the San Diego Foundation, where she chairs its scholarship committee. She and her husband also established an endowed scholarship that supports UC San Diego undergraduate students who work while attending school.

Bingham, 48, said in a recent interview with U-T San Diego that helping young people is a rewarding way of investing in the future.

Q: How did you become involved with efforts to provide scholarships for college students?

A: My mom worked for the county, my stepdad was a teacher. My parents divorced and both have been remarried for more than 30 years. There were five of us in school at the same time, so it was really difficult and a real stretch. I graduated with a lot of loans... As you can imagine scholarships were very important to us.

A:Neither of us is particularly interested, maybe because we don’t have children, in having stuff with our name on it. It is not as important as creating a legacy of paying forward and encouraging others to do the same. You can change a life, you can make a difference. ... A philanthropist isn’t some rich magnate necessarily. It is someone who really cares about his or her community and making it a better place for the people who live there and the people who come next.

Q: Who has most inspired you over the years?

A: My parents, who figured out how to put five kids through college at the same time, and a grandmother who was president of every organization she ever joined and who said, “Hey, women can do this and you should be in charge. And you know what? If you don’t think they are doing a good job, then you prove you can do better.”